After starting my TAS for this game, I discovered a glitch that would improve Enhasa's run by about 10min or so. It is the glitch that is displayed in segments 27 and 28. Nitrodon, a fellow TASer, discovered another glitch that is displayed in segments 29 and 32. With these 2 glitches, I started my run for this game, my goal was 3:30. I soon found out that after Kainazzo I was already about 7 minutes ahead of Enhasa's run. My new estimate was about 3:20 and really stretching for 3:15. Soon after I completely destroyed Enhasa's time during the Cal/Brena and Golbez segment, I thought 3:10 was the time to beat. Eventually though, I got it down to exactly 3:05. I'm quite satisfied with this time and suspect that 3:03 and MAYBE 3:02 would be possible, but not without a LOT of effort.

While making this run my cartridge decided to dump all data except for the bottom save. This left me with 2 segments that I wasn't entirely happy with. You can see this at the begining of segments 13, where the top save is mysteriously empty. It also happened when I was still doing segment 15. This was very upsetting because that is by far the worst segment of the entire run. There was a few spots (mostly in the last couple segments) where I messed up with the walking, but I was very very borderline 2:54 & 2:55 before I got to Zeromus, so these tiny mistakes wouldn't have made a lick of difference. This is why the Rosa leveling although about 30 seconds slow, would not have improved my end game time had I perfected it like the 2nd leveling segment.

Concerning the Cal/Brena Golbez segment, I would like to reiterate this quote from Enhasa "People have a hard time believing this, but it really is impossible to get Kain into the air versus Golbez at low levels." Indeed it is near impossible but there's an 8 frame window (note that this is only .13 seconds) for when you gain control of the cursor to select jump and select Golbez. Timing for this was tested on an emulator while doing a test run for the TAS.

Most of the improvements that are not related to the glitches are a result of better boss strategies, reducing the number of random encounters, not saving as much, not visiting the item shop in Baron, not entering the menu except when it's already being opened to save (i.e. changing characters around and equipping items just before saving), this includes never equiping a weapon out of combat except for Rydia and Rosa because I was already equipping other items that i couldn't equip in battle, Kain is the other exception because I wanted him ready to go ASAP against Rubicant, getting the Change Rod and Tiara which nearly doubled Rydia's dmg, and not getting the Crystal sword.

There's another trick that's abusable to reduce the in-game time. This trick is pausing during attack animations. This, however, I feel shouldn't be used at all. This compromises the in-game timer and therefore makes it unreliable. For this reason I did not use this trick for the run in order to preserve the integrity of this timer.

I did not want to reveal the information about the glitches or the strategies here so that people could watch the run and find out then and hopefully be a little bit suprised.

Okay so this is an improvement to my previous run here on sda. There is not really a lot more to talk about in regards to my old run. There is enough here to show that there was a dramatic increase in well routing, planning, and some executions.

Main differences between old run and this run:
1. All battles are fought on battlespeed 1 (except the final boss) - I used to switch to battlespeed to for goblez and on to ensure the Kain Jump is successfully performed. I dropped this and my window to get the jump by going to battlespeed 1 cause it saves soo much time.
a. The final boss is fought at battlespeed 3 instead of 4, for the same reason as above. it saves even time with text displaying in battle.

2. Discovery of the "MP Underflow glitch" and abusing the crap out of it to meteo some annoying bosses - I meteo Baigan and the 3 annoying sisters of wall-all-day. This saves me minutes in compared to my old run, and is a huge part of the the improvement.

3. Less time spent finding the encounter for the grind in the giant.

4. A few bosses have their strats slightly changed around to accommodate the new battle speed changes.

Last time I tried to include a list of splits with the times as an image and that didn't work out so well, so at the end of my comments i'll have a little "quick table" of references for my times at each point in the game.

About the new stuff: The MP underflow glitch - Since you can change the location of your spells you can trick the game into casting a spell it can't, and use more MP than you have. This puts you into the 65k MP range but you cannot use spells outside of battle. It also fixes itself with any MP recovery....

Ok about the bad stuff of this run:
1. I didn't skip cal brena... THATS RIGHT I BEAT HER. LEAVE ME ALONE
2. I didn't get the kain jump... THATS RIGHT I ALSO BLEW THIS TIME SAFER. but together those only somehow cost my run 30s... not even close to a run killer....

There is plenty more to discuss but most of the rest is just bad luck and doesn't amount to much, there is maybe 5 more minutes of reliable time that can be cut out of the run, but i saved soo much time from other random factors this run will be hard to beat without a significant route change, or matching/beating my luck.

If there a lot of questions, i can try to answer them in the FF4 thread in the casual section of the forum, i'm usually pretty quick to answer up!

If you want a script of "As the Tower Turns..." Talk to good sir EMPTYEYE not me.

Mist Dragon 10:24.35
Octomamm 22:42.18
Ant Lion 30:20.83
Water Hag 34:21.73
Mombomb 39:35.45
Fabul 47:10.27
Mt. Ordeals (MW) 56:04.78
Scarmiggles 1:03:37.18
Baigan 1:17:52.01
Kainazzo 1:19:22.97
Trollcobo 1:26:35.93
Dark Elf 1:31:53.25
Sisters 1:39:53.20
Valvalis 1:46:57.10
Golbez 1:57:32.68
Lugae 2:08:14.82
Edge Get 2:20:41.25
Rubicante 2:29:08.57
FuSoYa 2:43:37.39
Giant In 2:47:59.54
Grind Complete [50] 3:11:33.75
4 Elements(Miggles r2) 3:14:34.27
CPU 3:17:09.67
Final Dungeon! 3:22:53.27
Final Prep 3:30:21.71
Zeromus 3:40:03.48

<Thanks>
--Rane and Obdajr for being so actively involved in running FFIV. You guys still scare me when you come into my stream, but you've given me some amazing help. These guys are the true experts on the game.
--Cheap, the Japanese guy who developed the 64-exit strategies. This guy is legendary and deserves showers of gold.
--der_uber_owner, for having a great guide about breaking this game and having most of the information needed to make the 64-exit strategies work.
--Nitrodon, for actually understanding why "upt Co" is named "upt Co."
--Essentia, for playing this game as a kid and making me want to beat it someday.
--Driscollad, for saying something about Dancing Daggers. That completely changed the way the game's played in this run.
--The SDA crew for making this kind of thing enjoyable and rewarding.

<Background>
As a kid, I used to watch my cousin play video games. I loved to see him play Final Fantasy games except whenever he level upped -- he'd always go into his menu and write down every stat change. This was annoying. I wanted to see him kill stuff!

I was finally old enough to play a JRPG when FFVI came out. Essentia and I spent hours playing on a rented copy from Radio Shak. Eventually, my mother decided that she had spent too much money renting it and bought a copy for my birthday. Since then, I've had a love of the Final Fantasy series.

I tried to play Final Fantasy IV several times, but for some reason, I got distracted each time by some other game. Eventually, I decided to stick to my guns and finish it. I got excited about the game and searched around for ways to break the game -- I figured runners had pretty much decimated it.

Then I found the 64-exit glitch, and I knew I wanted to run the game.

Up until the Golbez fight, the run changes only a little from what other runners have done. These changes include skipping items in Mist and doing some glitch manipulation throughout.

<64-floor Glitch Guide>
Here's what you need to do to get the glitch to work for you.

1. Park the hovercraft directly to the west of Mt. Hobbs.
2. Make the last chocobo you ride run to the west. It must be a yellow chocobo, and riding a black chocobo will cancel it out.
3. At the beginning of the glitch, have your party members organized like this: Cecil, Kain, Rydia, Rosa, Yang. This usually won't affect much the first time you do the glitch, but it can lead to bad consequences later if you don't have this order.

The way this game works has to do with something called "hierarchy" in the programming. Basically, in order to warp back to previous rooms, the game keeps track of the rooms you've entered, giving them each a number. The world map is "0", the next place you enter is "1", and so on. Most entrances and exits will raise the number one by one; however, a few of them will subtract the number (most common with one-entrance rooms).

The thing is, the programmers only thought to have values 0 through 63 for this -- after all, how many dungeons would have more doors? Once you get to floor 64, the value rolls over to 0... and if you go through a "-1" door, the glitch happens. This can be done in a few places throughout the game.

When you get this glitch, it takes you through what I call negative floors. These floors are based on different values in the ram -- floor -4, for example, depends on airship position. When going down through these floors, you'll eventually find one that depends on values in the "custom" menu. By changing those values, you can go... well, pretty much wherever you want.

The best place to do this, at the moment, is after the Calbrena and Golbez fights. There might be some earlier moments, but these haven't been explored sufficiently yet, usually because some places where you can activate the glitch end up throwing you into rooms from which you cannot escape.

How to do the glitch: In the underground castle (Lali-ho!), you'll want to enter the castle and go to the right staircase. At this point, your hierarchy is at 2. Go up and down 61 times -- this sets the value to 63. Walk into Cafe Howdy, taking you to 64, rolling over to 0. Walk back out, and see the magic!

Here's what you'll want to set up for each round of the glitch.

1. Battle Speed: 6. Battle Text: 1. Red: 31. Green: 8. Blue: 2.
At times, you'll have to walk directions. Each direction listed below is only for when you actually move -- many floors automatically push you through. Now, depending on one screen, the directions change. After you have the screens with triumphant marching music, you will get to a brown screen -- if you automatically go through it, you'll follow one set of directions. If you don't go through it, you'll have to choose a direction. Here's the list of movement:
Automatic: Left, Left, Left, Up, Left, Up, Hold Left forever.
Not Automatic: Left, Left, Left, Up, Up, Left, Up, Hold Left forever.

After this, you'll get near the airship. Now, battlespeed has been corrupted and is 22, so battles take a while to run from. You'll want to keep it at 22 for later glitches.

Get the airship, fly to the castle, get Cid to upgrade the airship, fly to trap door cave, get rid of Kain, and fly back to the castle, parking the airship under the left side of the castle. This is essential -- it must be under the bottom left corner of the castle.

2. Battle Speed: 22. Battle Text: 1. Red: 0. Green: 3. Blue: 4.
After you count to 63, go buy items until you get to less than 256 gold.
Automatic: Left, Up, Up, Left, Up, Hold Left forever.
Not Automatic: Left, Up, Up, Up, Left, Up, Hold Left forever.
This time, get FuSoYa, and change his magic. Switch Warp with Nuke. Switch Fire1 with Stop. Bottom row of White Magic, put Life1, Mute, and Berserk. Cast exit.

3. Battle Speed: 8 (push left 14 times). Battle Text: 1. Red: 24. Green: 3. Blue: 1.
Automatic: Left, Up, Up, Left, Up, Hold Left forever.
Not Automatic: Left, Up, Up, Up, Left, Up, Hold Left forever.
Now, you'll end up at a save point. Be sure to save. I change the color values before saving in the run, but the next two floors depend on the in-game time. It's very random if you'll make it through. Also, be sure to save on slot 2 or 3 -- 1 and 4 can get deleted from the next floors.

4. Battle Speed: 8. Battle Text: 1. Red: 17. Green: 27. Blue: 1.
Walk to the exit above the save. For the first and second floor, try to find an exit -- usually up works. If you get stuck or get on a floor that looks like it's frying your cart, reset. You may lose saves on those. After that, hold left until you get to a castle. Walk down the stairs, and look at FuSoYa's magic; switch "Hold" with "upt Co." Cast exit.

5. No changes to Custom Menu. Do the stairs again.
Automatic: Left, Up, Up, Left, Up, Hold Left forever.
Not Automatic: Left, Up, Up, Up, Left, Up, Hold Left forever.
As soon as you get to the next place, I recommend changing the battle speed back to 1 -- it'll let you run from battles quicker. Go through it, and if characters die, be sure to revive them before entering the final room -- if you don't, you could make "W Meteo" fail, for some reason.

Enter the final room, and change the battle speed to 1 AGAIN. If you don't, the battle will last forever. Seriously. Also, switch Rydia with FuSoYa -- doing this gives him the first turn in the final battle.

Anyway, a little bit about where you are. Your party is very much messed up for the final battle. Most of your characters are at extremely low levels except for FuSoYa, who shouldn't even be there. He's at level 50. Woo. He's still not powerful enough to kill the final boss... or is he?

Lovely Cid fights with Golbez against Zemus. This alone is worth trying the glitch out. He adorably casts Meteo, and Zemus wipes them out. What a trooper.

Final battle, don't worry about the crystal. FuSoYa has the spell "upt Co," which is actually Reaction. Reaction is a spell used by grenades. When grenades get struck by lightning, they blow up and kill all enemies with it. See where this is going? FuSoYa casting "upt Co" one-hits the first form of Zeromus, ending the battle early.

<Run Notes>

First cutscenes. If you notice, I get attacked by a FloatEye. You generally don't get that attack, and if it happens, it costs a couple seconds -- this is unfortunate, but time is so variable from RNG that it's not worth a reset. In Baron, I grab the tent, something necessary to activate a glitch later on. Now, the first encounter of the battle I activate the infinite money glitch with Kain. This is normally better with with a regular counter, and getting a "strike first" slows me down a bit. I activate the glitch, reequip Kain and remove his iron glove for later, and head to the boss.

D. Mist. Ooh, so scary. Battle goes alright; I could've gotten better damage, but I still finished in a decent time. Last hit is a critical -- unfortunately, it pretty much doesn't save time.

Mist. Here's where the tent comes to use. By walking to the left and going into the inventory immediately to use the tent, the map shifts a bit, putting my sprite one square to the right of where it should be. Doing the same to the right with saving gets me on top of Mist without entering. I then enter from the right, finish the infinite money glitch, and sell the blank slot for... lotsa money. I'm able to buy dancing daggers with that money (which are used a lot), and I also grab the tiara and change rod in Rydia's house.

Kaipo. No encounters walking there, which is good luck. The guard fight gives the worst luck, unfortunately. No encounters walking to the cave, either. Tellah joins the ragtag team, and while there are quite a few encounters in the cave, none of them are surprise or back attacks -- I'm used to seeing one or two at this point.

Octomamm. The fight goes well, and Rydia dishes out the pain without dying. Her tiara keeps her alive, and the dancing dagger obliterates the octopus. I probably should've had Tellah defend for his last turn instead of attacking, but the octopus died without trolling.

Antlion cave! Edward is now Beastward.

Antlion. Cecil defends -- he deals the least damage and triggers a retort from the enemy. Three hits, and the ugly thing is dead -- at Edward's hands, no less. Edward beasts Waterhag.

MomBomb. Rosa dies, and that's alright. The main people who need to survive are Rydia and Edward. The rest of the fight goes swimmingly. After Mt. Fabul, I still have a pretty high encounter rate, but I get no back attacks or surprises. I'm actually really surprised by this -- it's pretty decent luck.

Fabul battles. Yang doesn't kill one of the imps in a single hit. Otherwise, everything goes according to plan until the end when Edward hides. A benefit comes of this, though; because Edward hides during the last battle, Cecil and Yang are able to kill one guard before they attack. It's an odd little battle speed thing, but it's better for Edward to hide than to die. Kain wastes time doing low damage the first hit on Cecil.

Mysidia. I equip the black sword then sell everything unimportant in my inventory to give me enough space for later. Shopping spree! I accidentally walk towards the weapon shop because I had gone there in previous routes... oops. The spies (twins) join.

Mt. Ordeals. The optimal route here is to give Palom the change rod and have him learn Fire2 by the time we get to MilonZ. The lilith and red skull battle appears perfectly for this. Milon goes down without a hitch, but MilonZ kills Palom off quite quickly. Sadly, it's all RNG, but I manage to bring him back fast and destroy MilonZ without losing too much time. Right before the next chocobo forest, I get my first surprise attack; this is insanely good luck that I've made it this far without any surprise or back attacks.

Baron. Guard and Yang fights go well, as does the shopping. The underground part, I get one back attack, and luckily it's one of the fastest ones I could get. MP underflow, and we let Baigon be Bye Gone. Kainazzo goes nicely. Of note: the spies are now stone! Yay!

Troia. Gotta have Tellah use an ether before he can cast spells in the menu -- it's a weird effect of the MP underflow glitch. There's one back attack before the chocobo forest. I really get trolled by a yellow chocobo; he just needed attention. The cave gives me very decent luck with encounters. I give Cid the iron glove that I took off Kain at the beginning of the game, resulting in a "perished" situation for the boss. Edward plays his harp, and Dark Elf time! He transforms sooner than I'm used to, and unfortunately it takes a while to get back to Tellah to cast Weak. Still, it went faster than usual. On my way back to Troia, the chocobo runs to the east, meaning I have to get one later and make it run west.

Tower of Zot. I get two back attacks here, which isn't unexpected. Luckily, I get Tellah's MP underflow glitch first shot, and the Sandy/Cindy/Mindy fight goes peachy. Unfortunately, equipping for Valvalus, I accidently select Cid, but the rest of the preparations go well. Because Cid died during the Dark Elf fight, the battle orders are a little off for me. However, the only real mistake I have is Yang attacking Valvalus while she's in the tornado. Otherwise, the fight is pretty darn good.

After Valvalus. I make the worst mistake of the game -- failing twice to land the airship. It's embarrassing, but really, Square should've made the movement less touchy. Chocobo runs to the west on my first try there, so the 64-floor glitch is set up with everything above ground. Time to go down!

Cal and Brena. No one likes this boss. No one. I get some bad luck with Cecil's damage, but otherwise, the fight goes fairly well. Golbez is a pansy now, and we destroy him before Rydia shows up.

DieHard! It's best to look at the guide above to know exactly what's going on here. Luckily most of this goes very well. The main problems are after the first set of 64-entrances; I get a back attack. The thing is, the battle speed gets corrupted, becoming 22. This is really slow, and that back attack is one of the worst battles to get. I heal immediately after; it could be possible to get a game over if they're low enough health, and I don't want to take that risk. This is easily the biggest time cost in the run, wasting around 20 seconds.

Anyway, the glitches go well. I take a safety save but luckily don't need it -- pure RNG was merciful enough to me on this run. I get to the end, Cid casts Meteo, FuSoYa casts upt Co, and Zeromus is dead!

<Final Comments>

It's possible to get sub-2:20 with really good luck. If you want it, go for it! Remember, though, learn the glitches well. Some bizarre things can happen with it, and it'll take some time to get used to everything in it. Once you do, though, it leads to a hilarious and enjoyable ending to the game.

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